What happenedLast week, Sharon Stone made comments at the Cannes Film Festival implying that the earthquake in China that has killed tens of thousands of people is connected to China's policy towards Tibet. Since then, Christian Dior has dropped Stone from their Chinese advertising campaign; the Shanghai Film Festival, which begins June 14, kept her off the guest list; and she has been let go from the upcoming film Mermaid Island.

What the commentators saidWell, if you want a demonstration of karma, here it is, said Rodney Brazeau on The Movie Blog. The Buddhist definition of karma is "bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation." Stone "shot her mouth off expressing some pretty extreme views," and now she's getting what she deserves.

She did make some "boneheaded" comments, said Grady Hendrix on Kaiju Shakedown, but "they're not nearly as bad as the sound bites I've been seeing on the television." I know it's hard to believe that television lied, but in context, Stone was talking about a humbling lesson, how sometimes you have to "be of service even to people who are not nice to you."

Stone herself thinks it's been an overblown misunderstanding, said Kathy Horyn in The New York Times. At first, she wasn't sorry for what she said, but when I asked her to review the videos of her circulating on the Internet, she said, "Looking at it on the tape, I look like a complete ding-dong." “I am really sorry that it created such a thing,” she also told me. "I misspoke for four seconds and it’s become an international incident.”